Thursday, March 4, 2010

Over the last three months there have been three major magazine articles about the health effects of electro magnetic radiation. In January there was a good article in Prevention Magazine. In February GQ magazine produced a long and very interesting cell phone article. This month Popular Science has printed a ten page story about cellphones and electro hypersensitivity (links below in Microwave News). I encourage you to buy copies and distribute them to others.

Martin

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Microwave News

Check out the latest articles in Time and Popular Science magazines --and two old ones in Fortune. See, once again, how so little has changed. Go to: http://www.microwavenews.comBest, Louis Slesin

Dr. David Fancy was working at his laptop when he began to notice a pain in his left hand. Initially, he dismissed it as writer's cramp, and kept working.

Eventually, Dr. Fancy's hand began to tire sooner and sooner. When the soreness began to be accompanied by chest pains, he realized that something much more serious was taking place. That's when he realized that he had a condition known as electro-hyper sensitivity.

Topics such as EHS and the health effects of electronic signals such as WiFi and cordless phones was the topic of discussion at Monday night's panel.

Experts, Dr. Henry Lai, Dr. Magda Havas, and Dr. David Fancy spoke in the Agora about the adverse effects of electromagnetic fields on human health.

Dr. Lai, a research professor in University of Washington's bioengineering department, argued that extremely low frequency radiation can have effects as damaging as Alzheimer's Disease.

Lai felt that, when reading studies arguing against health risks imposed by WiFi and cell phone radiation, individuals should take into account who is sponsoring the research. Lai's statistics suggest half of non-industry funded research studies found adverse health effects resulting from extremely low frequency radiation.

Dr. Magda Havas's presentation looked at "dirty electricity" and its effects on those with a condition known as electro-hyper sensitivity. The symptoms of EHS can include nausea and headaches, and can be as severe as paralysis and psychosis.

To demonstrate whether an area contains dirty electricity, she brought a metre that she used to measure the Agora. The reading showed that the area was "clean."

According to Havas, WiFi routers, and even the new mandatory smart meters emit radio frequency radiation that can cause adverse health effects in individuals who are sensitive to them.

Havas estimated that a third of the population is sensitive to radio frequency radiation. Her presentation relied heavily on case studies and highly specific examples of electro-hyper sensitivity.

Dr. Fancy, the chair of Brock's Dramatic Arts department, then addressed the crowd to discuss his experiences of being electro-hypersensitive.

After his symptoms of being electro-hyper sensitive intensified, he could no longer tolerate any radio frequency radiation and was forced to live in a trailer for two years.

Fancy criticized those who view EHS as hypochondria. He argued that the World Health Organization and Health Canada are refusing to acknowledge the significance of EHS. He called those with the condition a "hidden tribe of nomads" looking for exposure free zones and sympathetic doctors.

To prepare for the presentation, university staff searched Lakehead for stray WiFi signals to ensure that the campus was wireless-free. Many networks were shut down including The Study, the bookstore, as well as a computer-to-computer network in the Engineering Student Society office.

Cell-Phone Safety

It takes a little extra work to get in touch with Andrea Boland. The Maine state representative answers e-mails and lists her business and home phone numbers on the Web. But unlike many politicians surgically attached to their BlackBerrys, she keeps her cell switched off unless she's expecting a call. And if she has her way, everyone in Maine — and perhaps, eventually, the rest of the U.S. — will similarly think twice before jabbering away on their mobiles.

In March, Maine's legislature will begin debating a bill she submitted that would require manufacturers to put a warning label on every cell phone sold in the state declaring, "This device emits electromagnetic radiation, exposure to which may cause brain cancer." Her warning would continue, "Users, especially children and pregnant women, should keep this device away from the head and body." (See pictures of the cell phone's history.)

For those of you now eyeing your cell phones suspiciously, it's worth noting that both the National Cancer Institute and the World Health Organization say there isn't evidence to support the assertion that cell phones are a public-health threat. But a number of scientists are worried that there has been a dangerous rush to declare cell phones safe, using studies they feel are inadequate and too often weighted toward the wireless industry's interests.

An analysis published by University of Washington neurologist Henry Lai determined that far more independent studies than industry-funded studies have found at least some type of biological effect from cell-phone exposure.

Several countries — including Finland, Israel and France — have issued guidelines for cell-phone use.

And San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who began researching the issue when his wife was expecting their first child, is hoping his city will adopt legislation that would have manufacturers print radiation information on cell-phone packaging and manuals and require retailers to display the data on the sales floor. (See pictures from an X-ray studio.)

With 270 million Americans and 4 billion people around the world using cell phones — and more signing up every day — a strong link between mobiles and cancer could have major public-health implications. As cell phones make and take calls, they emit low-level radio-frequency (RF) radiation.

Stronger than FM radio signals, these RF waves are still a billionth the intensity of known carcinogenic radiation like X-rays.

The wireless industry contends that RF radiation lacks the strength to alter molecules in the human body; the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) maximum for cell-phone-signal exposure is intended to prevent RF radiation from heating tissue to the point that cells are damaged. Cell-phone RF radiation's "effect on the body, at least at this time, appears to be insufficient to produce genetic damage typically associated with developing cancer," Dr. Robert Hoover, director of the National Cancer Institute's Epidemiology and Biostatistics Program, testified at a 2008 congressional hearing.

But the body of research is far from conclusive. In 1995, Lai co-wrote a study showing that a single two-hour exposure of RF radiation — at levels considered safe by U.S. standards — produced the sort of genetic damage in rats' brain cells that can lead to cancer. Though subsequent researchers — often funded in part by the wireless industry — failed to replicate Lai's results, a 2004 European Union — funded study reported similar findings.

Interesting Internet Chat

Cell Tower

I have a degree in Networking Technology and one of my instructors was concerned about the health issues caused by all of the electrical signals running through our bodies. The towers and electrical stations are terrible, but we are also bombarded by so many signals passing through us on their way to their destination that it is becoming pretty hard to escape any side effects. My younger son is also extremely sensitive to the humming from electrical towers. When he was a toddler our neighborhood walks sometimes took us past a station and he would place his hands over his ears and say that the sound was scary. I could barely even detect it.

The buzzing from the electrical towers gives him migraines and just drives him nuts in general if he is too close to them. Apparently, it seems very loud and overwhelming to his senses. I don't know if the school is wi-fi, but hard wired computer equipment can be bothersome to him as well. He likes his own laptop at home, but tries to avoid computer labs at school and would rather research using books in the library.

Thanks for the link. I will have to read it. His connection is wireless. The laptop really bothers him less than the home PC, though, which is directly connected. He does have a weird sixth sense when it comes to WiFi signals, though. We have been shopping and he has questioned me if he can play a game. I have been mystified as to how he will get a signal, but he somehow knows where one is available.

This cancer expert (story below) is failing to consider the most important thing about cancer treatment - do not send the patient back to the conditions that caused the cancer. There is no mention about the possible triggers of the cancer in the home, the environment or the workplace. As long as cancer experts fail to monitor the cause of cancer, whether it be chemical, electro magnetic radiation or other causes, their patients will continue to re-develop the illness.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 02-24-10 Feb. 24--Max Wicha is coming to Pittsburgh today to deliver a startling message. Standard cancer treatments not only often fail to eradicate cancer, but can make it worse.

That argument isn't coming from a fringe proponent of alternative medicine, but from the founder of the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center and a pioneer in research on why cancers recur and spread to other parts of the body.

The reason breast cancer and other malignancies often return aggressively after treatment is that when tumor cells die under assault from chemotherapy and radiation, they give off substances that can reactivate a special set of master cells known as cancer stem cells, Dr. Wicha said in an interview Tuesday.

Dr. Wicha's lab has found that inflammatory molecules secreted by dying tumor cells can hook up with the stem cells and cause them in effect to come out of hibernation.

He is scheduled to deliver the 2010 Bernard Fisher Lecture at 3:30 p.m. today in Auditorium 6 of Scaife Hall on the University of Pittsburgh campus. The talk, which is free and open to the public, honors Dr. Fisher, a Pitt researcher who pioneered the idea that lumpectomies are just as effective in treating breast cancer as mastectomies.

The existence of cancer stem cells is still controversial in some quarters, Dr. Wicha acknowledged, but is gaining traction.

In the last two months alone, researchers around the nation have published studies on cancer stem cells in breast, ovarian, prostate and brain cancer.

Adult stem cells exist in most tissues, and go into action to repair damage from wounds or infections.

In cancer, they can mutate and no longer obey normal bodily signals to stop growing, Dr. Wicha said.

He and other researchers say that even when chemotherapy and radiation cause tumors to shrink dramatically, these stem cells can stay alive, living under the radar until they are once again spurred into action.

They also believe stem cells are probably the ones that break away from an original tumor and cause cancer to spread elsewhere in the body.

Chemo and radiation kill off the fastest-growing cells in the body, which applies to most cancer cells, but the cancer stem cells that create those rapidly dividing tumor cells actually grow much more slowly themselves, and are less susceptible to those therapies, he said.

One tactic to address this problem is to kill off both types of cancer cells at once, Dr. Wicha said.

A recent experimental trial with advanced breast cancer patients at the University of Michigan, Baylor University in Texas and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute at Harvard University used standard chemotherapy along with a substance designed to block one of the biochemical pathways of stem cells.

The approach killed off more than 90 percent of the cancer stem cells, Dr. Wicha said, and researchers now hope to expand the treatment to a much larger group of patients.

Ultimately, he hopes cancer treatments can avoid general chemo altogether, with its debilitating side effects, and just use targeted therapies against the stem cells.

There is still a long road ahead, he said, and "my feeling is, to really knock these stem cells out, we're probably going to have to use multiple inhibitors."

Tumors can re-seed themselves, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Tumors can not only spread through the body by sending out tiny cells called seeds, but they can re-seed themselves, researchers said in a report on Thursday that may help explain why tumors grow back even after they are removed.

They said their findings, published in the journal Cell, may also help lead to the development of new drugs to stop the process of cancer spread, or metastasis.

"Circulating tumor cells can also colonize their tumors of origin, in a process that we call 'tumor self-seeding'," Joan Massague of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and colleagues wrote.

"Now we have found that tumors can recapture some of their most delinquent children, enriching themselves with the most aggressive metastatic cells, enabling them to grow faster and more robustly," Massague, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute researcher, said in a statement.

"Now we are thinking that in some cases, maybe treatment left inflamed tissue that had been a home for those cells that escaped and were residing somewhere temporarily, perhaps in the bone marrow," he added.

"They may have re-entered the circulation in the weeks and months after surgery, and now, through the self-seeding process, have homed in on this tissue and reproduced the tumor."

Massague's team used mice, injecting them with human breast cancer cells that had been genetically engineered with a jellyfish protein to make them glow green under ultraviolet light.

They tracked these cells as they spread through the bodies of the mice.

Immune system signaling chemicals, including interleukin 6 and interleukin 8, appear to "call" the tumor cells home, Massague's team found.

Researchers are working on cancer vaccines that could harness the immune system to attack cancer cells more effectively. This study suggests it might also be necessary to tone down some aspects of the immune system.

WEEP News

by: Martin Weatherall

As a Canadian independent foundation, WEEP acts as an umbrella organization and focuses on progressive initiatives that bring increased awareness, policy change, and entrepreneurial activity around the issues of safe Electro Magnetic emissions.

WEEP News is a service provided by WEEP to keep those interested in and affected by Wireless, Electric, & Electromagnetic Pollution, informed on a daily basis, of all the current issues and initiatives in the world today.